How to Create Animated Presentation in AutoCAD | Autocad Tutorial Video

In this Autocad tutorial video, we will learn how to create an animation video for your AutoCAD 3d models presentation. There are two types of animation, which are the walking type and the flying type. In this Autocad tutorial video, you will learn how to create a flying-animation presentation.

First of all, prepare your Autocad three dimensional model to be presented. For any three dimensional objects which are edited in AutoCAD, I think it would be faster if you choose the 2D wireframe visual style. It would be lighter to be processed.

To create an animation in AutoCAD, use the anipath command. You can just type it in the command line, or you can add the toolbar from the customized option. In the anipath toolbox, you need to chose the camera and target position. You can put the camera along the path, or at a non-moving point. This method is also applied in determining the target. In this Autocad tutorial video, I choose to put the camera along a path, as well as the target.

Okay, to prepare the animation, view the model from the top. Using the rectangle command, I prepare a path. To differ it from other objects, lets make the path green. You can see that the path is located on the ground. To make a better view, lets put it into some elevation.

You can see that the path has the 90 degree sharp corners. This is bad for your camera movement, therefore you need to soften the corners. I use the fillet command to create some round corners.

After the path is ready, you can put the camera and the target at the same path, or you can put them at separated paths. Okay, let’s prepare two different paths, so that you can see the difference.

Then, type anipath in the command line, or you could click the toolbar if you have already added it. Put the camera along the upper path, and the target along the lower path, as shown in this Autocad tutorial video. You can also put the target at certain point, but you could do it later. You could also arrange the frame rate, number of frames, and the duration of the output video. You could also choose the visual style, the format and the resolution. If you want to slower the camera movement along the corner, make sure that the corner deceleration box is checked. Otherwise, make it unchecked.

When you’re satisfied with the arrangement, take a preview. In this Autocad tutorial video, you could see the result when the camera is put along the upper path, and the target is along the lower path. You can also put the camera and the target along the same path, and you could see the result in this Autocad tutorial video. You could also try different path for the camera. In this Autocad tutorial video, I use offset command to create another path with wider distance. You can have many views by combining many paths for the camera and the target as well.

If you okay with the preview, then you can save the video. The saving process would take some minutes. The result of the video depends on your arrangement in the anipath box. In this Autocad tutorial video, the object is animated in 3d wireframe visual style. You could try to make it in other visual styles.

Okay, that’s all. I hope after this Autocad tutorial video you could do the animated Autocad presentation by yourself. Please leave a comment to let me know what you think about this Autocad tutorial video.

How to draw a Tent | Autocad tutorial video

In this Autocad tutorial, we will learn how to draw a membran for a tent structure.

The main concept to draw a tent structure is to draw some frames, and then cover them with some meshes. Okay, let’s see how it is done.

First of all, you should change the view to a three dimensional view. Here I choose the south west isometric view. You can choose any other view you like. You need to take a three dimensional view because you are going to draw a three dimensional object.

Draw some frames using the polyline command. For this lesson, please duplicate what is drawn in the video. For how to draw a three dimensional objects, please go to the link shown on the Autocad tutorial video.

In the Autocad tutorial video, I divide the tent into four sections. This way, I could control the curve of the tent. You could divide it into two sections by deleting the middle curve, but as the result, the tent would be more curvy. You could do it by yourself after you accomplish this Autocad tutorial.

The most important thing to be noticed in drawing the meshes for the tent is, that each curve, must met each other’s end-point, instead of the lines’ intersections. This because to draw meshes, each edge’s end-point must connect to other edge’s end-point. Without this condition, the meshes could not be drawn.

For this reason, I add a layer called hidden, , to hide the curves I’ve drawn before, so that they do not distract my effort to link each curve’s end to the others’.

After the tent’s frame is completed, you should prepare the edges for the meshes. Each mesh need four edge, so in this lesson, I need to divide some arches, so that I could get four edges for the mesh. As could be seen on the video, I use the break-at-point command in this Autocad tutorial.

When the edges are ready, you could draw the meshes, and, voila, the tent is completed. You could add any materials for rendering purpose, or you just can switch the visual style into the conceptual style, or any other styles.

That’s all for this Autocad tutorial video. Please leave a comment to let me know what you think about this Autocad tutorial.